Do you miss the printed instruction booklet?

These days more and more gadgets don’t come with printed instruction manuals, but I think that for certain gadgets nothing beats a handy paper guide you can refer to when needed.

The disappearance of printed manuals has happened fairly quickly, and I blame the CD.

Back in the early 90s a copy of (the then revolutionary) Microsoft Windows 3.1 came with a bible-sized tome – the 650-page “User guide” and the relatively lightweight “Getting started…” guide, itself stretching to a mere 96 sheets of densely-printed black and white text.

Had a problem with your Windows? The answer lurked somewhere within one of those guides. And although there were no internet help forums in those days, we survived – book open on the desk, flickering monitor in front. The acronym “RTFM” became commonplace, strongly encouraging people to turn to the user guide when stuck.

Then we took a giant leap forward. The box you brought home was somehow lighter, emptier, devoid of gravitas. The answers to your questions, the troubleshooters, the setup instructions – were all uprooted from their paper and crammed onto CD-Rom bundled in with the software.

This, of course, meant a whole new method of head-scratching. Now you had your troublesome software in one half of the screen, while you simultaneously read about how to fix it in the other.

Manuals missing from gadgets

But it’s not just about software – printed manuals are now disappearing from cameras, mobiles, printers etc. And if you are lucky enough to get one, only five of the pages are English with the other unwieldy 50 pages assuming you’re happy to make life a bit more interesting by reading the instructions in Polish, Czech or Swedish.

Other devices come with a quick start guide – perhaps a single sheet that optimistically attempts to summarise the workings of a gadget more technologically advanced than early spacecraft into perhaps 100 words and a couple of pictograms. Less is not always more.

There’s even a digital equivalent of the chicken and the egg conundrum. Need to know how to turn on your new ebook reader? The instructions are supplied as an ebook, stored on the reader itself. Admittedly e-reader’s aren’t the most complex of tech gadgets, but they’re perhaps not intuitive to all buyers.

Of course, the environmental argument is clearly against hefty printed manuals. But many of us, myself included, actually enjoy having a paper manual in front of us. Cameras, especially, encourage experimentation and having a booklet to browse is part of that experience.

Giving us a CD and expecting us to print off our own user manual is often both tiresome and even more wasteful of paper. But maybe you’re glad to see the back of good old fashioned printed instruction booklets?

Vote in our poll

I purchased a Canon All-in-one printer (MX870) which allows me to copy or scan without turning on my computer. However the LCD instructions are scant and in the end I have to resort to opening up the guide on my computer. This defeats the object of speed which is often required if I want a copy in a hurry. I contacted Canon about a manual and got the usual ‘trite’ answer that it is on the web. Useless Customer Service as usual. I now print off odd pages as required because the manual is hundreds of pages long. Another problem is that the words used for operations aren’t always those in normal use. i have to wade through pages/indexes to find the names used by the writer.

I purchased a Cannon Pwershot Sx 30 Camera for around £500 with only a limited “start-up” manual. I really needed a small paper manual but I had to print off a 195 page CD manual on single sided A4 paper and cart it to Cape Town. It’s crazy after paying that sort of money especially with the latest weight restrictions airlines are imposing.

My personal preference is for simple printed instructions and a detailed manual online. The electronic manual can be searched and the manufacturer can update it if necessary.

There would be less need to consult instructions if equipment was better designed. In many cases, simplicity is the best solution. We spend a fortune on complicated electronic gadgets but it is not surprising that a lot of the features go unused.

At work we have two microwave ovens on a kitchen worktop. One has simple rotary controls to set the time and power. The other has sophisticated digital controls and various programmes. Almost all the regular users choose the simple machine and I have seen few users who are confident with the more complex microwave oven.

There’s no substitute for the printed manual. Most people are able to read, but not everyone has a computer and those that do, do not all have internet access for online info. It’s easy to take a printed manual on holiday with you – less so a computer, and you can read a printed manual anywhere.

I’ve just purchased F-Secure
and the 1/4″ thick manual has every language under the sun in it, the actual user instructions are one page when you wade through the ‘aren’t we clever’ intro and it says, “insert the CD-ROM into your drive and install the program”, – it will then mentions it will update itself and the CD can be used as a boot disc.

I recently purchased a Samsung MP3 which supplied a minute booklet with equally minute printing
I spent an hour on their website trying to find a manual – without success. Customer service were polite and they supplied a link but I landed up on the website merry go round once again to no avail. A good magnifying glass and a bright light are now my tools. Thank goodness MP3’s are not as complex as a camera.

I have done much research into buying a new point and shoot, but also discovered that an instruction manual—–included with the camera—–seems to be a thing of the past. I refuse to pay for the camera, only to have to waste ink and printing paper to print my own instructions. I do not even know how to go through the hundreds of point & shoot cameras out there to learn if any still come with instructions. I may just have to keep using my old Kodak Easy Share, which does have a nice, instruction manual. Any comments will be appreciated!
Thanks!

My Blackberry mobile phone came with a small printed booklet to start me off. On line the instruction manual is over 200 pages long. So I saved and printed just the index and filed it. Now if what I am looking for is not in the booklet, I consult my printed index, note the page number and look at it on screen. This is all a big compromise and no matter how large a manual is, I would much prefer a printed version.

I have a digital SLR and when I go on holiday, I take the instruction booklet in case I need it to do something with the camera that I had forgotten as I do not use the feature often. At home, the instruction booklet is kept handy so I can look up a feature I need.

I will never buy a camera without a propper instruction manual. These are being dropped by manufacturers in order to make extra profit. May they rot in ****!

I have always been a great believer of printed instruction books as long as they keep simple. I just bought a BEKO washing machine WML-15085Y and the instruction book came only in hebrew. Although I do read hebrew I find it much easier and faster to read English, especially when I am looking for guidance in the middle of a washing cycle. Can I get one on-line or thgough e-mail please? Thanks.

I have just bought a Nokia Lumia 710 Windows phone which comes with the most rudimentary instruction booklet. The phone is a VERY complex device and to sell it without a good written set of instructions is, in my view, outrageous. There is an instruction book nearly 100 pages long available on line from Nokia but even this is short on detail and does not cover everything. The thing that most interested me was to have my calendar and contacts automatically synchronised with my PC and for details of how to do this you have to refer to a Microsoft web site and then you find that even these are not accurate or full enough. The time I wasted before I got it working and I am still not satisfied that it is working properly. Again profit before customers.

I recently purchased a tablet – not one of the big names. The instructions with the unit were a joke but I was able to download the manual which is good but it starts after you have connected the unit to the Internet and that is what I need to know. Even the book I purchased from Which? ‘Laptops and mobile devices – made easy’ didn’t cover this in the Tablet section which was brief.

It’s not as if they are saving that much money! The cost to them in bulk of a printed manual must be tuppence compared with the immense amount of trouble they are putting the customer to. There are companies who will supply printed manuals, but they then cost over £10 each. I would rather pay £1 on top of the purchase price of the camera (or whatever) for a printed manual, and I’m sure the vast majority of other people would too, but of course we are never asked.

(It’s a similar mentality to kids who will break into your car to steal the radio, for which they will get only a few pounds but which will cost you hundreds of pounds worth of expense and time and trouble to replace)

On the subject of paper manuals, most of them are printed, in small format, on cheap paper which turns brown and crumbles when we save them. Compare them with sales brochures which are printed on glossy acid-free paper…

My new Panasonic Lumix camera has no printed manual. It does however come with a CD carrying a pdf file running to 300 pages, not something you can quickly flip through to find how to use a feature. Printed manuals are essential if you want to learn how to use the many features of the new camera, without them you are really stuck!

Hi, I am not advertising – merely offering a general solution. I used to bind books and manuals as a business. The business dried up for the very reasons stated here. I feel sure that I and many other printer/binders woul be happy to print off and bind manuals. I certainly still have all the necessary binding wires. However, as others have stated, these days suppliers provide an online manual of hundreds of pages. This would not be cost effective to provide. Manuals of just a hundred or two hundred pages could be provided. Does anyone see any value in this service?

No consumer product should require a hundred pages of user manual. The necessary part is usually only a few pages long and can be printed off and stapled together for ease of reference. With just a little more time it can be done back-to-back to make it more compact. Our boiler came with a perfectly good properly printed and bound user manual on good quality white paper. It only runs to about a dozen pages of A5, including all the safety information, is in English only, and is well illustrated. That should be the aim for all consumer products sold in the UK. Our ‘smart’ TV came with a doorstop of a book that is virtually impenetrable both in density and complexity.

I suspect there are really two different entities involved: the ‘Getting started’ pamphlet (and really good stuff should be easy to comprehend and operate) and a reference manual. That’s the thick one, should be online (which allows for easy updating) and should be in full colour and only for your chosen model and in your chosen language. Toyota, who make wonderful cars, provide interminably complex manuals which feature every model in the range. Just finding out which in-car entertainment system you have requires several hours and a PhD…

I’ve just bought a Panasonic PVR which comes without a printed manual which I would have preffered.
The online manual runs to over 80 pages in english alone. I thought I’d be able to download this to my ipad so I could study it in front of the TV. Turns out the manual is only in PDF format which isn’t compatible with apple softwear. Result is if I come across a complex procedure with my PVR ,I have to go to the other end of the house ,start my desktop start my printer…….. well you get the idea.
I’ve paid Panasonic a lot of money for their machine I don’t think its asking to much to be able to use it without more expense and hassle. When “WHICH” do a review of goods could they state weather the product comes with a printed manual.